Bowdoin College has been educating leaders for America and the world since the dawn of the American republic. Founded in 1794, Bowdoin is a highly selective college of approximately 1,750 students of distinction from across America and around the world.

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RoboCup Team Heads to Singapore for World Championship Games

The Northern Bites are bound for Singapore as they prepare to compete in the 2010 RoboCup World Championship Games June 19-25.

Seeded second in this year's competition, they will be among 24 teams competing for the world championship in the Standard Platform League.

The opening ceremony takes place Sunday, June 19, after which the Northern Bites are to be one of four teams invited to participate in a special demonstration before Singapore's minister of education.

RoboCup U.S. Open action in the Sidney J. Watson Arena in April 2010.

The four-day competition begins Monday, June 21. In its opening bracket, Bowdoin's team is scheduled to take on L3M, a joint team comprising students and professors from various French and Spanish universities, and the German Nao-Team HTWK, consisting of graduate and undergraduate students of Leipzig University of Applied Science. Profiles of participating teams here.

The Northern Bites took second place at the 2010 RoboCup U.S. Open for the Standard Platform League, held April 17-18 in Sidney J. Watson Arena.

Northern Bites Blog

Follow the play-by-play account of Bowdoin's Northern Bites humanoid robots as they compete in the 2010 RoboCup World Championship Games in Singapore by visiting the Northern Bites Blog.

The team's advisor, Samuel S. Butcher Associate Professor in the Natural Sciences Eric Chown, is organizing chair of the league and co-chair of the RoboCup Symposium, a conference held immediately following the competition.

About RoboCup

Four robots per team compete on a 4.4 by 6.8 meter field. Among many changes in the rules from 2009 include the use of a street hockey ball.

This evolution, which continually brings the rules more in line with "real" soccer, reflects RoboCup's goal as it strives to fulfill its mission statement: "By the year 2050, develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world soccer champion team."

The robots operate with no external control by humans or computers, and are executing programs written entirely by Bowdoin students, who must also calibrate the robots to each new environment — particularly with regard to color vision.